


be careful how you live and breathe

by eternalgoldfish



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Abuse of walkie-talkies, Alternate Season/Series 03, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Compliant, Lots of demodogs, M/M, Post-Season/Series 02, Thriller, demodogs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-03
Updated: 2020-10-03
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:29:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26801440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eternalgoldfish/pseuds/eternalgoldfish
Summary: “Billy,” Steve tries again. “Listen, if Max is gone, you need to get out of there.”Billy laughs. Rain hits the windows, rattles the back door, insulates the house from the rest of the world in a way that makes his laughter bounce around the house and linger in the walls.“Why?” He asks, because he knows what the scariest things in his house are. He greets them every morning and asks them if they want to read the newspaper with their coffee, tries to make sure Max is home in time to smile at them over dinner.“You don’t understand,” Steve says. “I don’t have time to explain. You need to run.”
Relationships: Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington
Comments: 12
Kudos: 200





	be careful how you live and breathe

**Author's Note:**

> This fic combines two ficclets I wrote on tumblr ages ago with two new sections. Enjoy!  
> The title is from "The Royal We" by Silversun Pickups.

**i.**

The dog door is flipped the wrong way again, the dog door for the dog Billy’s family has never owned, that the previous family decided to install in the seventies that never really worked right. Water squelches between Billy’s toes as he steps over the drenched mat at the back door, wondering what could have knocked the flap in to welcome the rain.

“Max, do you copy?” he hears, a familiar, masculine voice crackling from the kitchen table. Max’s walkie-talkie lies face down between an abandoned bowl of cereal and some loose newspaper clippings.

“Max. Max?”

“She’s not here,” Billy says, holding the device to his mouth as he leans against the table, wet feet sliding a little on the linoleum tiles.

For a moment, there is only silence. Then, slowly, the voice asks, “Billy? Are you alone?”

“Why?”

“Billy,” the voice says, slowly, “This is Steve. Steve Harrington?”

Billy knew the voice was familiar, should have been able to recognize it through some paper cups attached by a string, with how many times he’s heard it on the basketball court or in the hallways or in his dreams. Not that his dreams are about Steve, not beyond his cheekbones beneath Billy’s fists in the Byers’ kitchen.

“Okay? This is the second time you’re trying to hang out with my kid sister, dude. That’s fucking weird.”

“Billy,” Steve tries again. “Listen, if Max is gone, you need to get out of there.”

Billy laughs. Rain hits the windows, rattles the back door, insulates the house from the rest of the world in a way that makes his laughter bounce around the house and linger in the walls.

“Why?” He asks, because he knows what the scariest things in his house are. He greets them every morning and asks them if they want to read the newspaper with their coffee, tries to make sure Max is home in time to smile at them over dinner.

“You don’t understand,” Steve says. “I don’t have time to explain. You need to run.”

Something chitters under the table, breath on Billy’s ankles. There isn’t just rain tracked across the floor in Billy’s footprints, there’s blood.

“What?”

Thunder cracks. Billy nearly trips as he backs away from the table and slams into the kitchen cabinets, the chittering between the dining chairs growing louder. There’s a shock of lightning and under the tablecloth, where there should be darkness, there are teeth, teeth, teeth.

“Billy,” Steve says, “Run.”

**ii.**

Billy’s been running since he was a kid, feet tripping along cracked California sidewalks in his beat-up running shoes, suffering the dry summer heat as he sweat at midnight. Hawkins is not dry. The air is thick with humidity as he books it out of his house, walkie-talkie clutched tightly in one hand and his car keys in the other, too aware of the high-pitched chattering of the creature on his heels, of Steve Harrington’s voice buzzing and cracking as he calls Billy’s name over the device in his hand, begs him to run, like Billy doesn’t have that self-preservation crusted under his fingernails.

The gravel is slick with rain, makes his bare feet slip out from under him. He hardly catches his footing as thunder claps above his head and lightning shocks the world bright-white, startling the creature breathing hotter than the air, hotter than Billy’s skin. His keys fall between his fingers as he fumbles for the right one.

“Billy? Billy! You better not fucking be dead, Hargrove. You better be fucking running.”

And Billy is. He loses his footing half a foot to his car and hits the metal elbow-first in a way he knows will bruise deep, makes him swear and hiss and see stars on impact.

The rain rattles the trees, nearly hides the hissing and footfalls behind him as the thunder clatters with his heart beating in his ears.

“I don’t want to bury you. I hardly know you. God, Billy.”

Steve is screaming so hard that the walkie-talkie cracks and whines in the middle, misses words when he roars too close to the receiver. Billy gets the right key in hand as the beast leaps for his shoulders. He’s got the door half-closed when it hits the side of the door with a harsh thump and bounces back into the gravel.

Billy runs faster than he’s ever run with his father bellowing from the glassed in porch, telling him that he better never fucking come back, even though he calls the police to report Billy missing in the morning, hauls Billy back home with a bruised cheek and the memory of a hand hitting too-sharp on his cheekbone.

“Billy? Run. Run. Run.”

He tries the ignition twice as AC/DC blares over the ran, shocks him with familiarity that’s wrong in the dark, wrong as the toothy four-leafed maw spits cries and shakes its body. He hits the gas and flies down the road, can no longer hear Harrington as he misses the knobs on his radio to stop the sound, to hear the things gnashing in the rain.

“Billy,” Steve says. “Billy.”

Billy fights for the walkie-talkie in his passenger seat, almost throws it down into the well at his feet as he keeps his eyes on the road a veers in and out of his lane. He almost hits himself in the face when he brings it to his mouth, breath so harsh he almost chokes when he says, “Steve.”

“Oh god, oh fuck, Billy.”

“Where are you?”

“A cabin. A cabin near Jameson, off the road by the fallen oak, straight out. You’ll have to go on foot.”

“Christ. Of course.”

He whips down back roads until the pavement disappears, until all he sees are skeleton trees even in the hot summer, even in the air that makes him feel like his meat will peel off his bones like tender beef ribs.

“Billy,” Steve still gasps sometimes. “Billy.”

He hits the gas hard when he sees the fallen tree, nearly spins out until his tires fall into the ditch along the side of the road. He scrambles for the door, hands still slick with rain water and sweat, maybe blood from the deep gash on his elbow from where the skin split on impact.

“Billy,” Steve says as Billy’s bare feet stumble on twigs, rocks, and the leaves from the few living trees bracketing the road like phantom limbs. He thinks there is new blood between his toes, hisses as the ground breaks his skin.

Something is rolling through the woods, something that screams and chitters in the night just over the roar of the rain, the crack of thunder.

“Run,” Steve begs.

And Billy doesn’t need to be told again. He fucking runs.

**iii.**

He hits the cabin door head-on, woozy head blooming with pain as a shriek sounds inside. “Open the fucking door!” he shouts, almost thumps the wood with the walkie-talkie before remembering he needs it.

The world seems to simmer and crackle, but he’s bone cold with rain water, heat from the summer and his lungs not quite reaching his fingers as he wheezes. “Harrington? Harrington!”

The shriek inside wasn’t Steve, but Steve is the one that shoves the door open with him still half on top of it, lets him tumble in the second the gap is wide enough, quickly does up all the clicking locks. There are others in the room, Billy can tell, but he’s overwhelmed by the growing pain in his numbed, bloody feet, by how he can’t entirely catch his breath.

“Billy,” Steve says, for maybe the millionth time, and there are hands on him, checking for injuries, maybe. They’re too warm, almost sting where they touch his skin.

“Fuck,” Billy says, nearly whines.

The rain seems to be picking up, pounding on the roof and against the windows, droplets clanging into what sounds like a pot across the room.

“I can see them,” someone says.

“How many?”

“Five, maybe. But I think there are more in the trees, and on the other sides.”

“Could they break the windows?”

“We’ve seen them do it before.”

“Seen _what_?” Billy asks.

No one says anything.

Then heavy things are being shoved across the floor. Billy finally opens his eyes, blinks up at the roof. Steve is sitting next to him, half leaning over him, propped up with one arm as he talks into a walkie-talkie. Says, “Max, do you copy? Lucas, do you copy?”

“El is going to figure this out,” someone promises. It’s another one of Max’s shitty friends, the Byers kid with a bowl-cut. He looks almost as pale as Billy is sure he is, like he’s going to puke, or possibly die. “She did last time.”

“We thought we ended this last time,” the brat with no teeth says.

“And the time before,” the snot-nosed Wheeler kid says. “She’ll figure it out. She always figures it out.”

“And what, we just sit here?”

Something thumps into the side of the building. Toothless shrieks. Steve looks tired, so tired. Tries again, “Max, do you copy?”

“I have her fucking walkie-talkie,” Billy reminds, slapping at it.

“She’s probably with Lucas.”

And she fucking better be, but if she’s not? Billy takes a deep breath, closes his eyes again. This isn’t the type of monster he’s ever thought would be his end, not that he knows what this is, or what is happening, or why the forest is suddenly filled with teeth and tails and slick lizards born of tar.

Water plunks into the bucket. His sister is missing. Someone is cocking a gun.

“Can someone get that asshole off the floor? He’s just dogfood there,” Wheeler says, and god, he better not be the one with the gun, but the world fizzles out before Billy knows for sure.

**iv.**

“Nancy, do you copy?”

He’s in a bed. His feet are on fire. As he shifts in the sheets, he faintly realizes that he’s naked, and he’s not nearly as alarmed by that as he thinks he should be.

“Jonathan, do you copy?”

The world outside is still gray and angry, thunder and lightning rattling the window panes. Billy thinks he can breathe, listening to Steve’s voice drudge through names like he’s been doing it by rote, waiting for one more person to emerge from the storm. There is nothing on the other end, just the dim static and echoes from other walkie-talkies across the room.

“Still nothing?” Billy asks.

Steve jumps. Says, “Fuck. Yeah. Only a few more of those things have tried to get in, but—”

The but isn’t good. Billy heaves into a sitting position back to the headboard and blankets pooling down around his waist. Tips his head to look at Steve where he’s sitting next to him on the bed. “Think they’re getting everyone in town?”

Steve’s mouth is a fine line. He turns the device around in his hands a moment before saying, “They didn’t, last time. Just a few pets.”

“You keep saying last time.”

Steve closes his eyes, looks cursed, or maybe contrite. “The only thing that almost killed me that time was you.”

It feels more final than the next thump against the side of the building, the new thumping in Billy’s ears. He grips a fist in the sheets. “So I almost got eaten twice. Great. Thanks for sharing.”

“It wasn’t exactly a good time.”

Rain nearly drowns Steve out, feels like the heat starting to wash back into Billy’s veins. He says, “And this is?”

“Not exactly.” But Steve tilts his head to look at him as he says it, mouth still slightly parted after, like there is more. Like the clamouring from outside is pouring from his mouth, the chittering, the crashing, the plunk of a leaky roof. Everything seems louder.

“You weren’t going to save me.”

“We didn’t think it was an option.”

“Shit, guys, there are more!” Someone yells from the other room.

Steve’s face does something complicated as he glances to the window and then back. There will be too many. There is nowhere they can run. He seems to calculate this, calculate it the way Billy is trying to decide if he can stand on his feet.

There is something pink about Steve’s lips, his cheeks, something that cries louder than the trees, louder than god, and maybe Billy thinks about Steve’s voice more than he would ever let on, maybe he’d know it anywhere.

There’s a thump, then another, then another. A sudden rain of bodies thwacking against the side of the building, more violent than water. Billy takes a deep breath. Steve gets up and throws him pants, grimaces.

“Billy?”

“What?”

“Grab a fucking gun.”

**Author's Note:**

> I know polishing this up has been a long time coming, but I hope you liked it!  
> Thank you so much for reading, and I hope you're having a wonderful week.  
> As always, feedback is greatly appreciated.  
> You can find me on tumblr @eternalgoldfish.


End file.
